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The University of Nevada, Reno
Anthropology Research Museum

Interviewees: Catherine S. Fowler and Donald L. Hardesty
Interviewed: 2002
Published: 2013

Interviewer: Morgan Blanchard
UNOHP Catalog #232

Description

The Research Museum of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Nevada, Reno, was founded in 1980
when the department inherited a number of archaeological and ethnographic collections accumulated by the UNR
branch of the Nevada Archaeological Survey, a statewide organization that operated from the late 1960s through
the 1970s. Through the years, the museum became the repository of excavated materials originating from faculty
contracts in prehistoric and historical archeology—materials that required space for study and analysis as well as
curation. Additional ethnographic collections (including the Lulu K. Huber Basket Collection and Gloria Griffin
Cline Plains Indian Collection) were also acquired, so that the space and collections needed full-time care, including
cataloging, storage, and conservation. The Museum, located for decades on the fifth floor of the Ansari Business
Building alongside the Department of Anthropology, also has long served as a training facility for students pursing
the interdisciplinary Museum Studies minor. This oral history project, conducted in 2002, interviewed two faculty
members in the Department of Anthropology, Dr. Catherine S. Fowler and Dr. Donald L. Hardesty, both of whom
outline their memories of the museums founding as well as its role in curation and the education of UNR students
in Anthropology and the broader university community.

The University of Nevada, Reno
Anthropology Research Museum

An Oral History Conducted by Morgan Blanchard

University of Nevada Oral History Program

University of Nevada Oral History Program
Mail Stop 0324
Reno, Nevada 89557
unohp@unr.edu
http: / / www.unr.edu/ oralhistory

Publication Staff:

Director: Alicia Barber
Production Assistant: Karen Frazier

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upon request.

Contents

Preface ix

Introduction xi

1. Catherine S. Fowler

2. Donald L. Hardesty

Preface

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transcript should be approached with the

Anthropology Museum

same prudence that the intelligent reader
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records, newspaper accounts, diaries, and
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All statements made here constitute the
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For more information on the UNOHP
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Introduction

The following interviews, focused on
the history of the Research Museum in
the Department of Anthropology of the
University of Nevada, Reno, were conducted
by Anthropology doctoral student Morgan
Blanchard in 2002 as part of an Oral History
course he was taking. In these interviews,
Donald L. Hardesty and Catherine S. Fowler,
both Professors in the Department of
Anthropology, outline what they remember
about the circumstances under which the
museum was created as well as its role in both
curation and the education of UNR students
in Anthropology and the broader university
community At the time of the interviews,
the Museum was located on the fifth floor of
the Ansari Business Building on the campus,
where it remains in 2013.

The Museum began modestly when the
Department of Anthropology inherited a
number of archaeological and ethnographic
collections accumulated by the UNR branch
of the Nevada Archaeological Survey, a
statewide organization, in 1980. The Survey
was a grants-and-contracts operation that

had begun in the late 1960s. Artifacts
accumulated through contracts, along with
some gifts, were formerly housed in the
basement of the Physical Plant Building
behind the Mackay Mines Building on
the UNR campus. With the dissolution of
the Survey in the 1970s, the artifacts and
accumulated records were transferred to the
Department of Anthropology. When the
Department moved into the Ansari Building,
new space was provided for the collections,
along with potential space for developing
exhibitions based on them.

The University also had started an
interdisciplinary Museology (now Museum
Studies) program at about the same time,
combining and developing several courses
in departments (Anthropology, Art, History,
Home Economics, Biology) toward a Minor
course of study. This wide-ranging program
operated in cooperation with the Nevada State
Museum and the Nevada Historical Society.
Faculty in the Anthropology Department were
also accepting contracts in both prehistoric
and historical archaeology to benefit students,

Anthropology Museum

xii

and the materials resulting from these
excavations required study and analysis space
as well as curation. Additional ethnographic
collections (Lulu K. Huber Basket Collection,
Gloria Griffin Cline Plains Indian Collection,
etc.) were also acquired, so that the space and
collections needed full-time care (including
cataloging, storage, and conservation). The
new facility fit that need, and it operated with
student employees under faculty supervision.
Over the years, those operations continued,
and the training given to students in all facets
of museum operations became an active part
of the Department’s program.

Also over the years, in cooperation with
the interdisciplinary Museum Studies minor,
students have installed in the museum’s
display area more than twenty exhibitions,
all as class projects. These themed exhibits
have ranged from several on ethnographic
basketry and prehistoric textiles to student
excavations of historic and prehistoric sites.
Through this program, the students learn
artifact research techniques, principles of
design and fabrication (including lighting,
color, and specimen mounting), writing skills
for label copy, conservation and minimal
repair of artifacts, budgeting, and staging
openings. These skills have served many of
them well in their future employment when
they are called upon to install small exhibits
in workplace locations.

UNOHP
June 2013

Chronicler Bios
Catherine S. Fowler

Catherine S. Fowler, (BA University of
Utah, MA and Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh),
Professor Emerita, taught cultural and
linguistic anthropology as well as museum
studies in the Department of Anthropology,
UNR, for 38 years. Her areas of specialization
included North American indigenous
peoples and cultures (especially Great
Basin), ethnobiology, Uto-Aztecan languages,
and material culture (especially textile and
basketry analysis). She was Foundation
Professor and Outstanding Researcher, UNR,
and is a member of the National Academy of
Sciences and the American Academy of Arts
and Science.

Donald L. Hardesty

Donald L. Hardesty (BA University
of Kentucky, MA and Ph.D. University
of Oregon), Professor Emeritus, taught
archaeology, historic preservation, and
physical anthropology in the Department of
Anthropology at UNR for 43 years. His areas of
specialization included historical archaeology,
North American and Mesoamerican
archaeology, ecological anthropology, and
cultural resource management. He was
Foundation Professor and Outstanding
Researcher at UNR and has been president
of the Society for Historical Archaeology, the
Mining History Association, and the Register
of Professional Archaeologists.

Catherine Fowler

M ORGAN R. BLANCHARD: I'm Morgan Blanchard, and
today is November 7, 2002. This is an interview with Dr.
Catherine Fowler. It is being conducted in Room 509 in
the Ansari Business Building on the University of Nevada, Reno,
campus. Dr. Fowler, thank you for coming and being with us. Could
you begin with a brief biography? Tell me about how you came into
anthropology and how you came to UNR.

CATHERINE FOWLER: I basically came into anthropology
through an interest developed fairly early. When I was in my late
adolescent years and early teen years, I was always interested in In¬
dians for some reason. I was raised in Utah, and there were not
necessarily Indian people anywhere around, so I have no idea why,
but whenever it came to doing school projects, I always was inter¬
ested in doing them on some kind of Indian-related topic. That
interest was then solidified when I got involved with the Girl Scouts;
and the summers that I was fifteen and sixteen I had the opportu¬
nity to travel the Southwest in Girl Scouts-sponsored trips that were
conducted by Dr. Bertha Dutton of the Museum of New Mexico—a
very well-known Southwestern anthropologist. She took ten to fif¬
teen girls each summer on two-week trips to visit archaeological
sites and Pueblo ruins and see dances and native gatherings through¬
out the area.

ANTHROPOLOGY MUSEUM

Up until that time, my primary interest was in becoming a vet¬
erinarian. I was still pursuing that during my teen years, until I got
started in college and found out that being a veterinarian—espe¬
cially a female who wanted to work with large animals—was not
going to fly. I had already worked for a veterinarian for four sum¬
mers in a dog and cat hospital, and although I loved dogs and cats,
I didn't see myself ending up there and dealing with their owners.
The animals were fine, but the owners were something else.

So I switched after my second year in college and pursued an¬
thropology, going down to the University of Utah and entering the
department as an anthropology major and basically finishing my
BA there. The year that I was a senior, I took a class in Great Basin
Indians from Warren d'Azevedo, and that further solidified my in¬
terest. I also took his class on North American Indians.

During the end of that senior year, I was hired by the Glen
Canyon Project to begin work pulling together documentary mate¬
rial on the Southern Paiute occupation of the Glen Canyon area.
The field crews in the Glen Canyon area had found very few traces
of Southern Paiute occupation. There was plenty of Anasazi occupa¬
tion, now called ancestral Pueblo, but the traces of Southern Paiute
people who were still living there or certainly living there in his¬
toric times were very few and far between.

Jess Jennings, who was head of the project at the University of
Utah, decided that perhaps a technique that was then called the
direct historical approach—now known as ethnoarchaeology—
might work there. So he gave me the field opportunity to basically
go out with Southern Paiute individuals and a Mormon guide—so
that we wouldn't all kill ourselves in the country—and go through
the Red Rock country, especially the area around Escalante, Utah,
and down toward the river, looking for Southern Paiute sites, using
the native individuals as guides. I did that all the summer between
my senior year and the first year of graduate school, and I contin¬
ued with that work on the Glen Canyon Project through the
following year.

Between my junior and senior year, I worked for Warren
d'Azevedo on bibliographic assignments having to do with the
Washoe. At the end of my senior year, Warren left and went to
University of Pittsburgh. I had met Don Fowler in the Great Basin
Indians class, and so we courted by mail for the following year, while
he was in Pittsburgh. Then I decided to join him, and we got mar¬
ried and went to Pittsburgh, where we both ultimately finished our
PhD's.

Catherine Fowler

By the time I got to Pittsburgh, Warren had decided to come
here and founded this department, so as soon as Don finished his
coursework, Warren brought Don in as one of the first members of
the department in 1964. Since I had only finished the coursework
for the master's by that time, I went into the Desert Research Insti¬
tute here, where Joy Leland and I and one other individual basically
set up the Western Studies Center. Mary Ellen Glass was the other
person, who was actually the founder of the Oral History Program
here. We set up the Western Studies Center that would focus on
Native American issues here in the Great Basin. I stayed with that
until 1967, when I got the opportunity to go back and finish my
PhD coursework at the University of Pittsburgh. Now, that same
year, Don had a postdoc at the Smithsonian, so he went to
Washington, and I went to Pittsburgh and finished my coursework
within a year. After that, we came back out here in 1970. He went
into the Desert Research Institute, and I came into the anthropol¬
ogy department, first as a part-time instructor and then finally as
full-time.

What were you teaching when you came back?

Great Basin Indians at first, in the evening division. Then I re¬
ceived half-time employment for regular day sessions and taught
Great Basin Indians and also North American Indians. This allowed
Warren to teach African courses and other things that the depart¬
ment needed. Then I added linguistics, as well. At the time we came
back from Pittsburgh and the Smithsonian, Wayne Suttles was the
linguist in the department. After he left, and I finished my degree in
1972, then I started adding some of the linguistics courses.

Who else was in the department when you came?

Well, when we first came, it was Warren d'Azevedo, Buck Davis—
or Wilbur Davis—who was the archaeologist, and Wayne Suttles.

What did Wayne Suttles teach?

Wayne Suttles taught linguistics, general cultural anthropology,
North American Indians. He was an expert in the cultures of the
Northwest Coast and is still living. When he left here, he went to
Portland State University in Oregon, where he had been originally.

ANTHROPOLOGY MUSEUM

He left in about 1972, somewhere near then. Davis had left before
then, and Don basically replaced Davis as the archaeologist.

When you first came, you weren't here in the Ansari Business
Building.

No, we were actually in what's now the physical plant build¬
ing—the little, red-brick building that's immediately south of Ansari
Business Building. We had the top floor of that building, and offices
for the faculty were there. When Warren himself came here in 1963,
the department was in the old gymnasium, which is the area where
this building now sits, or at least in part, the plaza area that's out
immediately south of this building and next to the library. The li¬
brary was newly constructed at that point. This was an old gym that
was ultimately torn down. The department started in the offices
that were around the edge of the gymnasium playing floor, but by
the time we got here in 1964, the department was in the physical
plant. The basement of the physical plant then became the archaeo¬
logical lab within a short time.

So when you came back, then it had moved into the Mack Social
Science Building?

No, we were still in the physical plant when we came back, but
it was not too long thereafter. This was also the period when, ini¬
tially, anthropology and sociology were together. When Warren first
came, it was anthropology, sociology, and political science, I be¬
lieve, and then they split. When sociology and anthropology split,
we stayed in the physical plant for a little while longer and then
moved over to Mack Social Science, once they got it built. See, where
Mack Social Science is now, was the old football stadium, so that
building was not constructed when we were here.

One of the questions that I'm interested in is about collections and
collection space. In speaking with Dr. Hardesty he was mentioning
that there was a real problem in Mack Social Science. I didn't even
know that you had been in another building prior to that. So what
was it like to try to move into that space?

When we moved into Mack Social Sciences, we retained space
in the physical plant building. The archaeology labs stayed in the
basement, and so collections were stored there. The archaeological

Catherine Fowler

survey, which was originally started by DRI, had three branches: a
campus branch, a UNLV branch, and a Nevada State Museum branch.
The archaeological survey was based in the basement of the physi¬
cal plant building, also, and that was with Bob Elston and Jonathan
Davis and others. We had no space for collections at all in the Mack
Social Science Building.

So everything was pretty much stored over in the old physical plant.
Were you using those spaces for instruction ? Was there any sort of a
museum display?

There were no museum displays; there was really no proper
curation in the physical plant. There was a ruling—I don't know
exactly when it came down, but it was sometime after we moved to
Mack Social Sciences—that we could no longer allow students to be
in the basement. The faculty could be there, but it was too danger¬
ous for students! [laughter]

Faculty was disposable?

Yes, exactly. So after that ruling, then we basically didn't have
much in terms of laboratory space. We still retained the top floor,
though, for a time being. The physical anthropology lab was in the
south end of the building on the top floor, and the archaeology lab
didn't have a separate space, but they could often use the physical
anthropology space for a lab.

Now you're very involved in the anthropology museum that exists
today What was your relationship with those collections when you
first came?

There was nothing. No, the collections, we didn't take over un¬
til about 1980, when the Nevada Archaeological Society went out.

I think, actually, 1978 is when they closed from what I've been able
to figure out.

Yes, that's right. It was 1980 when we first started accessioning
collections. We decided that we needed to do something about it,
so we more or less inherited the collections. Otherwise, collections
that had been gathered by our own staff, including Don Fowler,
were largely curated up at DRI or at the state museum. We had no

ANTHROPOLOGY MUSEUM

curation facility, nor any designs on having one. During the time
that Elston ran the survey, though—this was the beginnings of
CRM—there was not a thought to curation problems, and certainly
not a thought that one should be charging for curation of artifacts.
It was just assumed they'd be absorbed into whatever institution
was possible.

So the collection sat in a state of benign neglect for a long pe¬
riod of time, because there was no money to do anything other
than field-catalog them and get them into shape so that you could
write up your reports. But no thought of putting them into some
kind of permanent housing. So when the survey collapsed, it was
that idea that we were going to have to deal with the collections
which were gathered under contract with the university. They be¬
came the university's responsibility, in essence. We basically started
from the ground up, accessioning everything that we could. We are
still actually accessioning collections from the old NAS days. When¬
ever things quiet down, and there's nothing else to do in the
museum, whoever is in charge of the museum in any one given year
is instructed to go out to Stead and find an Elston collection and
bring it into the system.

Dr. Hardesty seemed to make something of a distinction between
the archaeological collections and the ethnographic collections.
Would you agree with that distinction?

Well, it's a somewhat artificial distinction in that, initially, there
was nothing hut archaeology, but we still saw the same responsibil¬
ity; we had to deal with the archaeological material. So that's where
we started. If you go through the accession book, you'll see that
most of it is archaeology. There had been a few donations through
the years, when the Nevada Archaeological Survey was alive, of some
ethnographic pieces—nothing as sophisticated as a whole collec¬
tion, but we had some Seri objects, the Seri of Mexico. We had a
nice, little Eskimo collection of miniatures, largely toys. These are
things that had been accepted, not so much by Elston, but by the
previous DRI coordinator of the survey, Robert Stevenson. So they
were there, but there wasn't really enough to deal with as an ethno¬
logical collection, and there wasn't much thought, really, of making
an ethnological collection. We had no facility; we were having
enough trouble dealing with the archaeology and getting that into
some acceptable shape. Plus, we had no money, of course, to go out

Catherine Fowler

and begin collecting. We had a few things from the NAS days, but
there was nothing that one would call a systematic collection.

Now, at about the same time we took over the museum materi¬
als—the collections from the NAS—and started to put them into
shape, the university entered into the museology program. So that
was the catalyst to basically begin getting quite a bit of this work
done. We had student apprentices working as part of their museum
experience. At first, when we started the museum studies courses,
we had students do their apprenticeships at the state museum. Then,
as we started to take over the survey material, we started shifting
them to that.

When did the museology program start?

I think it's about twenty-five or twenty-six years old, so it must
have started about 1975. I'd have to look up the date. I recently did
a history of it, but I don't have that in my mind. That was a joint
program with art and biology, anthropology and history.

And that is still going on?

Yes. It leads to a minor in the undergraduate level.

Nineteen eighty-two was a big year for the department and the
museum. That's the year that it moved over to this building late in
the year. From what my research tells me, it's the year that we got
the Kitselman endowment, and it was also the year that we got the
Huber collection.

We were limping along, basically, accessioning the archaeologi¬
cal collections that we had, when the College of Arts and Sciences
got the opportunity to add two floors to the building that was being
built for business, which is what's now called the Ansari Business
Building. It was decided that some departments would move, along
with the dean's office. Those most crowded for space and having
the most difficulty were anthropology, because we had such limited
lab space and any kind of teaching space; mathematics, who are
upstairs on the sixth floor; and the social work group, which has
had several homes and now is no longer in the college. So they were
the departments that were most out of space, and we had the op¬
portunity to basically design some new space.

ANTHROPOLOGY MUSEUM

I don't know whether you've ever been over in Mack Social
Science, but when we went over there—and this was supposedly
space that was going to be designed for us—it was to include labora¬
tory spaces. What they gave us as labs were about the size of our
present offices, but they had a sink in them. So there was absolutely
no possibility of teaching physical anthropology or archaeology or
anything else in those spaces. With this new opportunity, we had a
chance to design some space, and, within reason, they told us they'd
give us about half the floor—if we could justify it. So we did that
and got the present space that we have, and we purposely designed
a museum room in that, with the idea that we would display mate¬
rials, but we would also use it as a primary curation facility for
numbering things.

Was it hard to justify that to the administration?

It didn't seem to be at that time. They took it as justification. We
also talked about it with reference to the archaeological programs
that were going on and the natural tie-in that the museum would
have to curating the materials from the archaeological work. When
Don Fowler was doing the bulk of the archaeology and Don Hardesty
doing prehistoric, before he started the historic archaeology, many
of lab facilities they used were out at Stead or over in the old physi¬
cal plant building. So we just flat out had to have some decent space
in order to continue the teaching program. The historic lab, the
prehistoric lab—or what became the prehistoric lab—the physical
anthropology lab, and the museum were the extra spaces that we
went after.

The Kitselman bequest came at the inquiry of the daughter of
Mr. Kitselman, who had taken an interest in Nevada and in the
department and wanted to leave some kind of an endowment to
the department. I believe Warren d'Azevedo was chairman at the
time. We decided that one of the things that the department really
needed at that time was something to help pay for the museum and
for a curatorship in the museum. We approached the Kitselman fam¬
ily with that idea, and they endowed the museum. I believe the
initial endowment was $ 75,000, only the interest of which is spend¬
able. That initially allowed us to offer the Kitselman fellowship to a
graduate student, and it would pretty well carry a graduate student
for a year. Hard times put a drain on the money, in terms of trying
to add to the principal, which they have to do in order to keep the
principal viable; and decreases in the stock market have made it less

Catherine Fowler

viable, so that now it does not carry somebody on a full ride. Of
course, tuition has gone up and fees and everything else. So now we
can offer it usually every other year as a full fellowship, and then on
the off year, there usually has to be a supplement of some sort. In
recent years I've been paying the supplement out of my own funds,
as an assistantship.

We're going to talk about some of the funding issues a little later; I
want to ask you about some of those, but that all kind of came
about the same time as the Huber collection came in, which is a
large collection.

Gordon Huber, who ran Huber Business Systems here in Reno,
the 3M distributor, was a Bay Area businessman, but he'd been in
Nevada for quite a number of years and had run his company here.
He felt that he owed something to Nevada, since Nevada had been
good to him. He approached me in the late 1970s about the possi¬
bilities of taking the Huber basket collection, which was his mother's
collection. Lulu Huber had started collecting when she was twelve
years old and had amassed a collection of about 560 baskets. I said,
"Well, we would love to have it, but we have no place to put it."

So he said, "Well, I'll wait, and we'll see what happens."

I said, "Perhaps, with the development of the museum in this
new building, if they take our suggestions, we'll have a place, and if
we do, we'll make sure that the collection is high on our list."

When we did move into the building, we designed a vault next
door, which isn't an ideal vault, but at least it's a special room that
would house the Huber collection for the basketry. The first shows
that we had were of Huber material.

But, actually, it wasn't donated, it was loaned?

Initially, he talked about donation. When it came time to actu¬
ally doing it, he decided on an extended loan, which he kept active
until the time he died, but he died somewhat suddenly, and so we
never actually got title to the collection.

And that caused a problem. 1 found in the paperwork there was a
whole sale, and it looked like quite an effort for the museum.

Well, we were caught somewhat off guard, because we had
assumed that the collection would come to us, but, apparently, since

ANTHROPOLOGY MUSEUM

Mr. Huber had not gotten around to formally doing that in his will,
his children—he left three children—decided that they wanted to
sell the collection instead, because by this time, of course, Indian
baskets were very valuable in the art market. They had always been
valuable to a certain realm of collectors, but now it was much more
a popular thing to do, and so the prices of the baskets were escalat¬
ing rapidly. The collection was wasn't really evaluated, but it was
conservatively "guesstimated" to be worth probably about half a
million dollars, not quite three-quarters of a million, at the time
that he passed away. So his son, especially, saw the possibility of
making that kind of money on it.

The first thing we knew about it, that we were not keeping the
collection, was that the son wrote and said he had the catalog. We
had gone to all the trouble, through paying our students on the
Kitselman fund, to catalog the collection, identify it. We had Larry
Dawson come up from the Lowie Museum at Berkeley to identify
pieces we couldn't identify. So we'd put a fair amount of work into
it ourselves, and a fair amount of money. The son, Gordon Huber
Jr., had the catalog that we had produced, and he had shown it to
one of the top basket dealers in the Bay Area, who immediately
said, "I'll give you a hundred thousand dollars for twenty of these
pieces." So the first thing we knew, that we weren't keeping the
collection, was when he arrived to take the twenty pieces to sell. He
then came and took another thirty or forty pieces that were
Southwest to sell down in New Mexico.

So, given the bad shape of the bleeding of the collection, we
asked him, "Is there anything we can do?"

And he said, "Yes. Buy it."

Then we launched an effort, which was partly spearheaded
through the College of Arts and Sciences, to raise private funds to
see if we could salvage at least some of the collection. I've forgotten
the name of the individual who was the grant person for the College
of Arts and Science at that time, but you can certainly dig that up
through the archives. I think his last name may have been Bell. He
wrote a grant to the Buck Foundation, and another successful grant
was written to the E. L. Cord Foundation. We were able to acquire a
fair amount of the collection. We also held three or four fundraisers
within the community—one down at Sharkey's in Carson Valley,
one here in Morrill Hall on the university campus, and people from
the community came. This was advertised through the College of
Arts and Sciences mailing list, and it was in the Silver and Blue.
There was a write-up about the collection and the fact that we were

Catherine Fowler

losing it unless we raised money. So through these fund-raisers, we
raised an additional amount. Finally, in the end, I think we raised
roughly $100,000 to maybe $125,000.

I found a mention in the records of almost $140,000—including
the grants and everything. How much of the collection were you
able to purchase?

We ultimately were able to purchase all but one of the Washoe
pieces. We decided our highest priorities would be for the Great
Basin and also California, since the Southwest was gone already. We
were able to save the Washoe, Northern Paiute, and other Great
Basin pieces, and we saved a fair amount of material from California.
I think, perhaps, it was a little less than half the collection. I think
we probably ended up with about two hundred pieces.

And what did the collection actually include? It wasn't entirely bas¬
kets, was it then?

Pretty much. There were some odds and ends that the Huber
family had collected, particularly from the Pan Pacific Exposition
in San Francisco, a few bows and arrows from here and there. They
were not particularly interested in selling that, because it had, they
thought, very little value. It probably has a little more value now,
but they were interested primarily in selling the baskets.

In addition to what you purchased, some of it was actually donated,
as well?

Some of the pieces were donated. When we got down to the
actual end, and there were, I would say, probably, dregs of the col¬
lection that were not worth very much, the Huber family decided
that, in view of our efforts—we had cataloged it and had spent a lot
of money and had been storing it for nothing for all of these years—
that they could donate some of them—about thirty pieces, I think,
at the end.

That's obviously, as far as I can tell, the largest collection or dona¬
tion or effort that the museum has ever been involved in. What sort
of things had the museum, on a more regular basis, been working
on?

ANTHROPOLOGY MUSEUM

We had largely been working with the archaeological collections
and trying to clean up the mess from the archaeological survey. The
other very large ethnographic collection that we took in is the Griffen
collection. That is a collection principally of Northern Plains—largely
Blackfeet—beadwork, pipe working, all kinds of related materials
that had been accumulated by Robert Griffen, who was the father
of Gloria Griffen Cline, who got her PhD in history here at the uni¬
versity and wrote some of the first and most influential books on
the Great Basin. She died in an accident in England, and when the
family got to a point where they were trying to distribute their es¬
tate or figure out what to do with their estate, they decided to endow
the reading room in Special Collections in the then new library, in
memory of their daughter. So they basically gave the collection to
the library at that time, and we oversaw it for them. We cataloged it,
and we advised them on storage. We helped them with exhibits and
displays. When the library decided that it really needed the space
that the collection was taking up, for books, as they were flat out of
space, they decided to give the collection to us, because it would
stay within the university system.

The accession number on the collection is 77, which means that
it was initially cataloged in 1977. But we wouldn't have gotten it
then. We got it, I suspect, sometime in the early 1980s, maybe even
as late as the mid-1980s. We still retain some obligations to do ex¬
hibits for the library, although that's gotten less so. We have had
exhibits there until just this past year; we have maintained their
exhibit cases. We still have some materials over there, but they're
now, again, out of space, and they're redoing the reading room again,
and so most of the rest of the material is coming back over here.

How does the policy change over time concerning the acquisition
of collections? Have you just been taking what you get?

We have no money to purchase collections, although we did
purchase about three or four collections years ago, through a special
grant that was acquired when we had the opportunity to get some
well-documented Western Shoshone beadwork. The Arts and Science
grant writer helped us. At one time there was a big basketry collec¬
tion with that. Documented Western Shoshone materials are
particularly lacking in museum collections around the country, so
the college said that it would try to go after that.

There was also a very large collection that we thought about
going after that had to do with Klamath and Northern Paiute from

Catherine Fowler

the Surprise Valley area. The grant writer for the College of Arts and
Science put together a package to the Buck Foundation and man¬
aged to get a grant of about fourteen thousand dollars. By the time
we raised that, which was what we figured was about all we could
raise, the asking price for the Klamath collection was seventy thou¬
sand, and we just could not see our way clear to start all over again
with another grant.

Who had that collection, out of curiosity?

It was a local person in town.

I knew of another one called the Kober collection. It was sold, pieced
off that way.

Anyway, we were active in those two efforts. Out of that, since
we had gotten a grant for about fourteen thousand out of the Buck
Foundation, but we couldn't buy the Klamath collection, and we
didn't have enough to really do the bulk of the Shoshone collec¬
tion, we were able to purchase some Western Shoshone beadwork,
some piece of that collection. We also had enough funds left over to
purchase a few beaded baskets that represent local artists and are
part of the collecting area or policy for us.

When was this being done?

This was being done in the 1990s.

Those baskets were purchased from modern art museums within
the native community locally?

Yes.

I was just wondering about that. That's kind of an interesting
choice—to be gathering modern ethnographic materials.

Life hasn't changed. The native people are still producing things.
They're still here, and they're very famous for their beaded baskets,
in particular. This is a local, regional thing that has developed here,
and there are a number of very good artists out there. Our general
focus for the museum, of course, is Great Basin material, and our
collections policy is that we will take materials from the Great Basin.

ANTHROPOLOGY MUSEUM

The Griffen collection already belonged to the university, and it
technically isn't Great Basin, but it's useful for teaching purposes
and also for display Apart from what the staff does, which is largely
in historic archaeology and in prehistoric archaeology, our own ac¬
tive collecting would be to collect contemporary materials and older
materials. We take donations from individuals who want to give us
materials, with an emphasis on local or Western collections. You
can tell from the museum exhibit that's up now, which has to do
with how you acquire collections. There are probably about ten col¬
lections now featured there that have come as private gifts or as
purchases, but beaded baskets are a local thing. We have a number
of excellent beadworkers here in the western Great Basin, who hap¬
pen to be basket artists, in addition, so it's a natural for us.

What role does the museum play—or does it have a role to play —
with the native peoples here in the Great Basin, as a repository for
this material?

We have had some donations from native peoples—not a lot
but some—who see us as a place to safekeep their materials. Until
the recent turnover at the Nevada State Museum, with Gene Hattori
going in as curator, their relationships with the state museum were
nil, so they were much more amenable to having materials come to
us. Now, of course, the state museum is being very active with the
native communities.

How does the anthropology department use the museum in its in¬
teraction with native peoples?

Not so much directly, other than through our exhibit program.
We do basket exhibits probably every other time, because they are
showy, and they are worth seeing. We always feature something
from the native community, something of the baskets. We've had a
half dozen different thematic shows using the basketry collection
as the main material, and we always make sure that local artists are
included. They're always invited to participate and to come to the
openings, but we do not, as you can see, have a facility that's big
enough to do anything. Certainly, we don't have a facility that's
worth going after a major NEH grant or anything of that sort to try
to do a big exhibit. If we did, it would be a cooperative exhibit with
the community, but whatever we do that has to do with the native
community, we always have people involved.

Catherine Fowler

We're not a museum in that sense; we are a small display facility
for collections that are used for teaching purposes. The primary
purpose of the museum is not to collect , so to speak, but to use what
we have to display and to instruct. It's an educational institution.

How is that being used in the department?

Well, I don't know how other people use it, but the department
participates in the museology program. We use the museum itself as
an instructional facility, both to teach students how to manage col¬
lections and how to catalog them and how to exhibit them and
display them, minimal amounts on how to conserve collections.
We don't do anything heroic in the conservation line, although at
one point we thought we might get more actively involved in things
like metal conservation and other things, but we just don't have the
facilities to do so. Neither do the labs, so that's out of the question,
but we use it as an instructional device to teach those aspects of
museum training.

We use it as an exhibit facility to teach students how to put
together exhibits, how to do it without a great deal of money, rea¬
sonably inexpensively, so that it looks more or less professional,
and that's our primary focus. Other than that, I use the individual
items and parts of the collection in my teaching in Great Basin and
also North American Indians and other courses. I don't know
whether others do or not. It's up to them.

You mentioned early on that when the NAS was going, they didn't
have any concept that there should be fees charged for storage. I
understand that we have done that on occasion, and that that's
brought in some money that is helping out in the museum. How
does that work with the current policy?

Actually, as far as I'm concerned, everyone who curates through
the museum now, including our own staff, should be paying curation
fees, because if they don't, we have no operating money. But for a
time, when Bob Elston and a few other contractors were fairly ac¬
tive, and they requested that we curate materials, we did set up a
curation fee schedule. We do a minimal amount of this for outside
individuals, but we do not have enough facility space. We have to
use the space at Stead, which is not always properly secured and has
its own problems. So we have taken in curation fees, but only on a
very limited basis. If it were up to me, I would charge our own staff.

ANTHROPOLOGY MUSEUM

But our own staff doesn't seem to agree, so they've been getting
away with nothing for a long time! [laughter]

And they like it.

They're paying the price, though, now, because there hasn't been
any money to curate the material.

Right. That leads to an interesting question. What's going to hap¬
pen with this? I mean, we have substantial collections at Stead; we
have substantial collections here. Are we headed towards, in your
opinion, deaccession?

Well, I don't know. It'll depend on how the department recruits
staff in the future and whether they decide to change the policy
and make local staff pay curation fees. If they don't, I don't see how
the operation can maintain itself too much longer. This is all we
really have as a budget, is the Kitselman fellowship.

Isn't there a semi-endowment, as well, from the Mule Canyon
project?

Very, very small.

What would you like to have happen with this? There's rumors that
you'll be retiring in the next few years, and it's going to be moving
on to someone else.

Well, I personally would like to see the department recruit in
the direction of somebody who has museum training, so that the
museum itself can be maintained and also the teaching of museology
can go forward. If that ends up not being a choice that the depart¬
ment makes, then I will work to have at least the ethnographic
collections transferred to the state museum. I will not leave them
vulnerable. Technically they are university property; they are state
property. I don't want to see the state or the university sell them off,
as happened with the loan collections that we had. In these finan¬
cial times, who knows? I see very little interest on the part of the
staff to really maintain the museum, so I hope they'll recruit in that
direction. If they don't, then I'll work to have it transferred. The
historic collections are not my business, nor are the prehistoric col¬
lections, other than the ones that are accessioned under our care,

Catherine Fowler

and those I feel the same way about. If somebody is not going to
properly maintain them or make sure that they're checked on and
dealt with properly, then they should be deaccessioned and sent to
the state museum, but that won't be cheap. We can't expect the
state museum to take them for nothing. There's going to have to be
a major settlement involved in making sure that they go. They prob¬
ably will take the ethnographic collections without a fee, because
they are so valuable, but I don't see them taking the archaeological
material.

The cases of the debitage are probably not high on their list? [laugh¬
ter]

Exactly, or all the tin cans and broken window glass and square
nails—I don't see them taking that without a fee. So I think it's
something serious that has to be dealt with. At one time, of course,
we were going to have a university museum. It was going to have a
separate facility; it was going to have a director, a permanent staff;
there'd be joint appointments; there would be a big curation facil¬
ity.

We're not the only ones on campus with this problem. The art
department, biology department.... Home economics got rid of
its problem, because when Marilyn Horn retired, she made sure all
of the collections she had accumulated in clothing and textiles went
to the Marjorie Russell collection at the state museum, but they had
the same kind of problem. Collections on this campus are not at all
cared for. It's only by a dent of our own efforts and our own money,
in many cases, that we curate what it is we have, so I think it will be
a crisis in the future.

Of course, nationally, with reference to archaeology, there's a
huge crisis. Lots of places are just refusing to take collections any¬
more, because they're overburdened in archaeology, both prehistoric
as well as historic. It's not happening in ethnographic museums,
but certainly is for archaeological material related to CRM projects.

I hear intermittently about the idea of the university-wide museum.
Was that ever really an option?

It was something that was being talked about by a number of us
on campus. I would say it got almost to the viable stage, [laughter]
And then it was decided that we might have to put up a little bit of
money in order to get some good advice. University museums are

ANTHROPOLOGY MUSEUM

not things that make vast amounts of money. They tend to be sink¬
holes and tend to end up costing a lot more than paying. It was
quite clear it would have to come from a private endowment, be¬
cause the state has enough trouble trying to support the state
museum and all of its branches. It's not going to put any money in
the university budget to have a museum.

There was a time during the 1990s, when Ken Hunter was the
vice president for research, when we were exploring the possibility
very seriously, with a couple of donors. There was some interest on
the part of the University Foundation to go out after people who
might be interested in such a proposal, and then it all just fizzled. It
went the way of the various proposals to link up with the city of
Reno to have a university and city of Reno facility down by the river
that would attract tourists and be part of the redevelopment of down¬
town and all of those things, none of which had gotten anywhere.
So, largely, the museum situation is in the same boat.

Biology is still in as much trouble as we are. They have collec¬
tions all over Stead—poor curation for them at present. They do
what they can. The biology department itself finally transferred their
herbarium over to wildlife and range, where it's at least secure. But
it was in the same situation. When Hugh Mozingo retired, they de¬
cided not to recruit in that direction for a botanist. So, basically, if
you come from a discipline that's collections oriented, and you get
to the retirement stage, you have to start thinking about where it is
those materials are going to go.

What are you planning on doing after you retire?

I plan on continuing to do research. I just won't be teaching,
[laughter]

That's what everybody says! They get to do the fun part of this.

It's a profession; it's not a job. The teaching is a job—an enjoy¬
able one—but that's not what it is we are. We're people who do
research. I have enough research to last several lifetimes.

Well, good. I thank you for coming in and talking to me today. I
thank you for your contribution.

Donald L. Hardesty

M ORGAN R. BLANCHARD: I'm Morgan Blanchard, and
today is October 30, 2002. This is an interview with Dr.
Donald Hardesty in Room 509 of the Ansari Business
Building on the University of Nevada, Reno, campus. Dr. Hardesty
could you begin by giving me a little biography about yourself, your
education, and how you came to UNR?

DONALD L. HARDESTY: Well, I was born and raised in West
Virginia and spent a couple of years in Washington, D.C., after I
graduated from high school in 1959.1 was working for the National
Bureau of Standards in their electronics miniaturization section. In
1962, I moved to Lexington, Kentucky, and began to work on a
degree in anthropology at University of Kentucky, which I finished
in 1964. From there I went to graduate school at University of
Oregon. I left there in 1968, took a job at University of Nevada—at
that point, there was only one University of Nevada—with the in¬
tention of spending a year here and then going on to do dissertation
fieldwork in Mexico, which was my major area at the time. And one
thing led to another; I got married, and I ended up staying. The job
here became permanent, and I've literally been at UNR since 1968.

So you were ABD when you came here?

Yes.

ANTHROPOLOGY MUSEUM

Whenyoucame, the anthropology department wasn't in theAnsari
Business Building.

No. It was in the Mack Social Science Building.

What was the space like over there?

It was somewhat similar to what we have here, except we had
only office space; we didn't have as much office space. The offices
were actually larger, and, among other things, they didn't have a
pillar going up through the middle of the office. The space was fine,
but it was very limited, and we certainly didn't have any room for
laboratories; we didn't have room for any kind of storage of arti¬
facts, field equipment, or anything else.

Before we start talking about the collections and what you were
doing with those sorts of things, who was on staff at the time when
you came?

Warren d'Azevedo was the chair of the department. Ken
Knudtsen, who is now deceased, was in the department. Bob
Winzeler came the year after I did. If I remember correctly, both Bob
and Ken came in 1969. And Don Fowler, who joined the depart¬
ment in 1964, was adjunct at that point and in the Desert Research
Institute. Kay Fowler, in 1968, was part-time. I think she taught a
couple of courses in the department, but she didn't really become
full-time for another couple of years. I'm trying to think if there's
anyone I'm leaving out. No, I don't think so.

What was Ken's specialty?

Ken Knudtsen was a Pacific Islands ethnographer. He also was a
graduate student at University of Oregon. In fact, I knew him up
there, although he was basically coming out of the field when I
came into the program, so he was actually a little older.

And Bob Winzeler is a specialist in Borneo?

Yes, and Malaysia, generally. He came out of University of
Chicago and came here in 1969.

Kay and Don Fowler were from where?

Donald L. Hardesty

From University of Pittsburgh. I'm trying to remember if there
was another staff person. I don't believe so, because at that point, I
taught both archaeology and physical anthropology courses in the
department. So I played both of those roles, and all the rest of the
courses were essentially cultural anthropology. We didn't have a lin¬
guist, for example.

It sounds like the research focus has changed since then, with a
couple of Pacific Islanders and Bob Winzeler's focus on Borneo,
Malaysia.

Yes, it has. Warren d'Azevedo basically had two research areas,
one in the Great Basin and the other in Africa. He worked in Liberia
for years and years, so that was one research area in the department.
But the focus of the department was then—and in some sense still
continues to be—Native Americans in the American West. The re¬
gional focus has always been the American West.

W hen you came to the department, what was your focus, and what
did you bring to that?

Well, basically, what I did, was to add physical anthropology,
which, when I came out of graduate school, was one of my major
areas. And the other was archaeology, but with a focus on
Mesoamerica and Central America. I taught courses in those areas. I
also taught a course in archaeology of North America, so kind of a
general North American area. I taught high civilizations, and I also
did ecology courses. So that was what ultimately became my disser¬
tation—a theoretical approach to ecological anthropology.

Obviously, you 're best known now as an historic archaeologist. When
did you start making that shift?

It really started in 1971, but I probably have to explain that.
When I was working in Mesoamerica and Central America, espe¬
cially later on, I tended to work more with later civilizations in the
area, so that the idea of working with documents was not all that
unusual, especially in the last ones I worked at in Guatemala. We
were working at a site that had actually been burned by the Spanish,
and there were Spanish descriptions of the site, so we were working
a little bit with documentary information.

ANTHROPOLOGY MUSEUM

But in terms of what we now call historical archaeology, it didn't
really exist as a recognizable field when I was in graduate school.
For example, the Society for Historical Archaeology wasn't started
until 1968, the year that I actually left the program ABD, so working
with those kinds of materials in the very recent past was unknown
to me at that point.

In 1971, I contracted with the U.S. Forest Service. In fact, this
was the first contract work, the first CRM, or Cultural Resource
Management project, that I was ever involved in. It was a project
just outside of Lava Bed National Monument, and it was basically a
survey, an inventory, of archeological sites in that area of the lava
beds. Most of it was prehistoric, but some of it was associated with
the Modoc War of the 1870s. And so, in a sense, that was my first
exposure to what we now call historic archaeology.

In 1973, I did my first field school at UNR. It was in the Little
Valley area, which is between Washoe Valley and the Tahoe Basin.
It's kind of halfway up. Especially in the 1870s, it was a wood indus¬
try center for the Comstock. There were a lot of sawmills and things
of that sort, and it was pretty much completely cut over by the 1870s.
But we did archaeological work on some of the historical sites asso¬
ciated with that occupation, and one of them was a saw mill. Then
we also, as part of a survey project, encountered some overseas
Chinese sites associated with the wood industry during that time
period.

Then in the following year, 1974, I had a field school in
Guatemala, which was my last trip to Mesoamerica.

Was the field school actually done through UNR?

Yes, it was. It was combined with the State University of New
York at Albany. A former mentor of mine at Oregon, who was at
SUNY then, worked with me in this project.

In 1975, I went back to Little Valley, and we worked at one of
the overseas Chinese sites. And then probably the next major his¬
toric project that I was involved in was in 1980 with what's now the
Historic American Engineering Record. At that time it was NAER,
the National Architectural and Engineering Record, which was a
very short-lived combination of those two. We spent the entire sum¬
mer basically doing a HABS/HAER, Historic American Building
Survey/Historic American Engineering Record, documentation of
the Comstock area, of Virginia City, and the surrounding area. While
this was not specifically archaeological, it involved an archaeologi-

Donald L. Hardesty

cal component, and it also involved architectural history and a num¬
ber of other things.

From that time on, I began to focus more on the mining kinds
of activities, in part because, if you look at what was happening
during that period of time, there was a big mining boom in the later
1970s and into the 1980s. Gold prices were way up. I know they
were at one point up to eight hundred and some dollars an ounce,
and so there was a lot of mining going on. Simultaneously, there
were more regulatory activities taking place. ARPA had been passed
in 1979, the Archaeological Resource Protection Act. From that time
period on, for the next ten-plus years, there was an enormous amount
of CRM archaeology being done in areas that were being actively
mined and in historic mining areas that were being reopened.

You were contracted through the university, having students do that
work?

In many of these instances, I was doing a lot of the work myself.
Students were also involved, but you have to recognize that at that
time we had a very small graduate program.

Were you offering Ph.D.'s at that point?

No.

Just the master's program?

In fact, we only had a handful of students in the master's pro¬
gram at that point. Tom Burke, who talked two days ago, was one of
those master's students. He's now the assistant state archaeologist
for the BLM in the state of Nevada. So, basically, that's how I got
into it.

The anthropology museum is the major focus of what we're talking
about today. So what was happening to the collections that you
were generating in these archaeological projects?

In most cases, collections weren't being gathered because, in most
of those instances, the work that was being done would be described
as phase one, basically surface survey, a minimal amount of testing,
so that the whole phase three area of mitigation through excava¬
tion and so forth was not done through UNR. It would basically go

ANTHROPOLOGY MUSEUM

to other private contractors. And the Nevada State Museum at that
point was also actively involved in contract archaeology. We also
had the Nevada Archaeological Survey that did much of this work.
So we had really a very minimal amount of artifact collections to
deal with, and they were handled at that point in a very informal
way. We had no specific place that they could be curated. The arti¬
facts that we had were essentially kept in university offices. We had
a small facility in one of the offices, as I recall, where we could do
things like that, but for the most part, artifacts that were curated
were curated in either the Nevada State Museum, or we were able to
arrange with the Nevada Archaeological Survey to do that.

Can you tell me a little more about the Nevada Archaeological
Survey? How did that fit in on campus and with what the anthro¬
pology department was doing?

The survey goes back to the later 1960s. I think it was 1968 or
1969 when it was actually started by a fellow named Robert
Stevenson, who later moved to University of South Carolina. It's
another story, but when I was on sabbatical there in the late 1970s,
I at one point housesat for him there, [laughter]

Stevenson was brought in to basically organize the archaeologi¬
cal survey. And as I recall, Molly Rnudtsen—who was a prominent,
essential Nevada rancher and a regent here for years—was an active
supporter of archaeology and actually helped fund the archaeologi¬
cal survey in the beginning and got it started. In the beginning it
was housed at and was part of the Desert Research Institute. The
dates are probably going to be a little bit confusing, but in the very
late 1960s—1968, 1969, 1970—it was associated with the Social
Science Center at the Desert Research Institute, which was directed
by Don Fowler. I'm still a little bit unclear about the exact associa¬
tion between the Social Science Center and the archaeological survey.
They were not the same at all, but whether or not the survey was
administratively part of the Desert Research Institute then, I'm just
not really sure. That's something you might want to talk to Don
Fowler about, because he can give you more specific, detailed infor¬
mation.

From what you know of the NAS, what was their mission?

It was basically to do contract work in public archaeology. Again,
this was the time when the National Historic Preservation Act had

Donald L. Hardesty

been passed, and there was some archaeology, that we would call
CRM, being done even then. In a sense, they were getting in on the
ground floor of that. In addition to that, it was considered to be a
statewide archaeological research program. I think that was the in¬
tent of it, initially. It was partly funded by private sources in the
beginning, with the idea that they would be able to bring in money
through grants and contracts to document and interpret Nevada's
past. Most of the work that was being done was, of course, focused
on the more remote past, but even the survey did occasionally get
into materials that we would call historic today. But a lot of that
tended to be ignored, and that was typical of that time period.

So my understanding is, in talking with Bob Elston, that the NAS,
Nevada Archaeological Survey, died about 1978 through some fund¬
ing issues, and that had an impact on the anthropology department,
as far as I understand. Check me if I'm wrong, but from what Bob
says, most of the collections from the NAS fell on the anthropology
department.

That's exactly right. Yes.

How did you handle that?

Well, we had difficulty handling those collections, because, first
of all, we had a minimal amount of storage space. We had no staff
that could take care of the collections. And so, basically, for a long
period of time the collections were just stored out at DRI, as they
still are, but nothing was being done to them. They were on shelves
in boxes that were falling apart. That was the case for quite a period
of time, and to a certain extent it's still the case—that we're manag¬
ing to go through many of those old Nevada Archaeological Survey
collections and curate them properly, but there are still a lot that
haven't been touched since they were first collected and boxed up
in the 1960s.

When you talk about collections, what do these collections actually
consist of? What sort of materials did we get?

They're primarily lithic materials from prehistoric sites. We're
talking about both chipped-stone and ground-stone artifacts, for
the most part. There are soil samples; there is faunal material. There
are other things, such as textile fragments, beads, but the vast ma-

ANTHROPOLOGY MUSEUM

jority of it is basic lithic debitage, things like projectile points, scrap¬
ers, other kinds of stone tools, chipped-stone tools. There are
ground-stone artifacts—manos, metates, mortars, pestles—just ev¬
erywhere.

Along with all the artifacts, the anthropology department did get
all the records, as well?

That's right. The records were basically given to us in the state
that they were in when the archaeological survey disbanded. That
is, they were in file cabinets, and they were filed in folders for the
most part, but not really organized in any systematic way. That kind
of goes back to the relationship between what was then the Social
Science Center at DRI and the survey, because, basically, the collec¬
tions from the archaeological survey and the records were stored,
and still are stored, in the old Social Science Center facility, which is
the DRI Fox Building at Stead in that old air force base. That's where
the Social Science Center had been housed when it was in existence
in the later 1960s and into the 1970s. In fact, Don Fowler was brought
out and hired in 1968 specifically to run the center. Or, if he wasn't
hired initially for that purpose, he was hired very shortly after he
came here for that purpose and then remained in that position un¬
til he moved into the position he's in now as director of the Historic
Preservation Program. So, at any rate, the facility that was the Social
Science Center became then the repository of the collections and
the records from the Nevada Archaeological Survey.

So, from what you're saying, not much has been done with that
collection since it arrived here.

Within the last two or three years, we have made some inroads,
at least getting into those collections and repackaging them. Theresa
Solury, for about a year and a half, actually worked on those collec¬
tions. She's a current master's student. That was one of the things
that she was charged with doing, and she is getting those collec¬
tions in some kind of manageable order, as well as the later
collections that came in as a result of field schools and other activi¬
ties that took place primarily from the late 1980s through the 1990s.

From my research, I understand that the department actually moved
from the old social science building to the Ansari Business Building
in late 1982. At least for the archaeological collections, that didn't

Donald L. Hardesty

have a large effect. The development, when that happened, is when
we got a formal anthropology museum and space to do that in the
department, ft sounds like it didn't have a giant impact on the ar¬
chaeological component of those collections.

No, not at all. The idea of the museum had been around for
quite a while, and the intent was to basically link the museum to
the Nevada archaeological collections, so that we could more effec¬
tively manage it. But the big emphasis of the museum was
ethnographic collections—the baskets, the beadwork, these kinds
of things—that the museum today still focuses on.

You mentioned that we started to generate collections of our own
through field schools or other projects. How did that really come
about? When did that start to become more prevalent?

The first major field school that involved collections of any sort
was the one in Little Valley. So in both 1973 and 1975 we had some
collections that were housed in the department. In fact, most of
those ended up at Stead in the facility that we have now. The next
major collections were 1981, 1982, and 1983, with the project that
was going on in the Cortez mining district in central Nevada. This
is an area between Austin and Battle Mountain, the very north end
of Grass Valley, Nevada. We had field schools out there all three
years, and those collections came to the university.

The field schools—were these contract jobs for the BLM or forest
service?

This was probably the first major project that involved collabo¬
ration between UNR and a government agency. These three field
schools were basically subsidized by the Bureau of Land Manage¬
ment, and the university, in effect, considered the curation of the
collection as part of its contribution to the project. It was about that
period of time, in the 1980s, when this became much more com¬
mon—the relationship between government agencies and
universities in the conduct of archaeology. The idea was that the
government agency would provide a certain amount of funding;
the university would provide funding through fees and tuition for
the field school and would also curate the collections, although,
quite frankly at this point, there was very little discussion of collec¬
tions per se. The emphasis on curating according to particular

ANTHROPOLOGY MUSEUM

standards was not something that really got off the ground until
the 1980s. There was some discussion of it in late 1970s, and there
was not much active concern for the collections. They were basi¬
cally just boxed up and stuck someplace with no real consideration
of the long-term care of the collections.

So, in the early 1980s, we had those collections from field schools.
There were field schools in the late 1980s and early 1990s in
Shermantown, and I'm just mentioning some of those that I was
involved in that had significant collections. The next major ones
were those in Virginia City, starting in 1993, 1994, 1995. Oh, we
had field schools in Virginia City that had substantial artifact col¬
lections.

What sites were they working on?

Well, these are the saloon sites, basically. The first one was the
Hibernia Saloon and the lot adjacent to that, and those were both
in 1993, 1994. The other saloon was done in 1995, the O'Brien-
Costello Shooting Gallery. So those all had major collections
associated with them.

We now also have projects that graduate students have been in¬
volved in, like the Boston Saloon project and the Island Mountain
project, all of which have substantial collections, as well. The issue
now has become, how do we properly manage those collections
with a minimal amount of space? Also, we're probably going to have
to move away from the idea of using collections as part of the match
for government contracts, as we have in the past. So we'll probably
end up having to budget for curation on a much larger scale than
we have before.

Yes. To let the listeners of this tape know, I am a graduate student,
doctoral student, of this program, and I'm working in Alaska. As
both Dr. Hardesty and I know, one of the concerns was where that
collection goes, mostly because we didn't want it! [laughter]

Yes. Exactly.

Can you tell me how that shift occurred? What do you think that's
going to look like? I understand that people are actually charging
per square foot for storage spaces. How do you think that that's go¬
ing to work for us and affect our collection policy?

Donald L. Hardesty

Well, it very much is going to depend on whether we are able to
acquire any more space at the university. We're trying to get some
additional space, and we're trying to hold on to what space we have
at the Stead facility, for one thing. If we're able to do that, if we're
able to hold on to and also increase the amount of storage space out
there, then we will be able to acquire more collections, but with a
cubic-foot cost. Right now we have a standard fee of $750 a cubic
foot, and it would be at least that. The Nevada State Museum, for
example, charges $1,200 a cubic foot, and they're an official state
repository. Actually we're considered to be an official state reposi¬
tory, also, by the government agencies. We can continue to curate
collections, however, only if we get that additional space. If we can't
do that, then any collections that come from research projects or
field schools will have to be curated at another institution. And if,
for example, the Nevada State Museum agrees to curate them, then
we have a major charge of what could be $1,200 a cubic foot. Now,
sometimes for larger collections, rates can be negotiated. But the
main point is that that's going to be a major budgetary item in
whatever project an agency has funded, and it certainly means that
we'll no longer be able to use the curation of the collection as a
match for contracts that come from government agencies.

Right. Now, I understand from doing some research, that the actual
anthropology museum has charged substantial amounts—in one
case in particular, $25,000—to store some items. Have we had the
archaeology side of this done? This particular match came from a
CRM firm, and it came in through that side.

The research and contracts from archaeology within the depart¬
ment have not contributed a lot to the maintenance of the collection,
quite frankly. And that's certainly something that's going to have to
be done. We have, on a few occasions, agreed to curate collections
for a fee, such as the one that you mentioned.

It was Mule Canyon, I think.

Yes. I think that's right.

It wasn't something we'd done. It came in from Bob Elston's firms.

Yes. And it was arranged for a particular fee that that would be
done, but we're now to the point where, unless we get additional

ANTHROPOLOGY MUSEUM

space, that will not really be possible. We've tried to curate collec¬
tions that are of local or regional interest, so we have agreed, for a
fee, to curate some collections from the Truckee area, for example,
and they're usually small collections. In fact, I have a telephone call
later this afternoon with a person up there about just that. But we're
to the point where we can't really curate much additional material
until we have a major increase in space.

Let me back up a little bit. You mentioned that Theresa Solury, who
was a master's student here at the time, was working on these col¬
lections. How is that getting funded?

Actually, that was done through a graduate assistantship. In that
particular case, instead of assigning Theresa to a course specifically,
she was assigned the responsibility of working with those collec¬
tions. In one semester that was actually done as part of a course, a
lab methods course, basically. She was able to work with students
who were working with some of the collections out at Stead, not
only doing analysis, essentially, of the collections, but also getting
them into some sort of properly curated condition.

So it doesn't sound like there is a budget at all for dealing with these
collections.

No. There's not a specific budget, and we were able to do that
with Theresa because we had this pressing need. The collections,
particularly the old archaeological survey collections, were literally
starting to fall apart. The boxes were collapsing, and the whole fa¬
cility was in a state of disorganization, because nothing was really
being done to it. So, as a pressing need, we could make that kind of
allocation, but that was a very temporary kind of thing. We have
one student this semester who is doing basically the same thing
that Theresa was doing, but in the spring he will be moved back to
regular classroom activity.

So, just as an ideal—and I know that things rarely get to the ideal
point—why do we want to collect this stuff? Why are we interested
in maintaining it?

It's part of the responsibility of doing either research archaeol¬
ogy or field schools. Since this is basically the database that we have,
and we're collecting the data, we're responsible for preserving the

Donald L. Hardesty

data. The issue then becomes how that can best be done. The one
issue that is going to be important, and is coming up more and
more, is one of deaccessioning—whether a lot of that material can
be deaccessioned, that is, basically removed from the collections
and disposed of in some way without compromising the mission of
archaeology, what archaeology is all about. And that's going to be
the issue of the twenty-first century, as far as I'm concerned.

In the past, there have been a couple ways of looking at it.
Archaeology, up to the 1970s and into the 1980s, probably, in this
area—and this is true in a lot of different places, too—would tend to
see archaeological collections that were of the more remote past as
being incapable of deaccessioning. That is, you should keep every¬
thing, because we don't really know what information might be
useful in the future, and we don't even know what might be infor¬
mation in the future. So there has always been this idea that you
should collect everything.

But then, at the same time, if you encounter artifacts from the
more recent past, then a lot of times that was considered dispos¬
able. People either wouldn't collect it, or if they did, they could
throw it away; they could do basically whatever they wanted to it.

Then as we move into the later 1970s, the 1980s, and the 1990s,
when there's a lot more work being done with the more recent past,
there's also the feeling that those artifacts should be treated in the
same way as all archaeological collections. There was an enormous
amount of material that had to be conserved, curated in some way,
including huge, massive amounts of tin cans and things of this sort.

Then we move into the period in which we are questioning it,
whether everything needs to be curated but, interestingly enough,
not for philosophical reasons, although there is some of that, but
more for practical reasons that curation faces—just disappearing
everywhere, especially in the West, but it's also true all over the
country. So now people are saying that, well, we don't really want
to save everything, and now the question is how to devise appropri¬
ate procedures for identifying and then deaccessioning things that
we don't want to keep.

It's obviously a pressing problem, but in terms of our own collec¬
tion, it seems like the bigger problem is not keeping it; it's keeping
track of it once we do have it, and maintaining it. What do you see
as the problems with dealing with these large collections in preserv¬
ing the information? For example, the NAS thing: it doesn't sound

ANTHROPOLOGY MUSEUM

like there's a consolidated database that would tell you what was
even there. We're not even sure what's there.

Yes. That's exactly right. It obviously has to start with basic in¬
ventory of the collections that is accessible. If you go into the
archaeology labs now, or even into the museum, you see a lot of this
going on. A lot of what you see is actually entering data into com¬
puters or wherever. But there are some important issues, because if
you make decisions about what should be kept and what shouldn't
be kept, you have to have a philosophical framework, as well as a
strategy, in mind for that.

Ultimately, you always go back to one of the reasons why people
argue that you should keep everything. There are two ways of look¬
ing at it: one, if you're looking at artifacts as a source of information
about the past, obviously, there are questions that we haven't asked
yet that artifacts might be able to answer. If we simply throw them
out because now it doesn't look like they're going to be important,
then you won't be able to do it. The other thing is that the tech¬
niques of acquiring information from artifacts change dramatically
over the years, so that now there are physical techniques for acquir¬
ing data that were not available even ten years ago. So, on the one
hand, there's a problem of information and how you're going to
effectively manage it through preservation, and, on the other hand,
deaccessioning.

The other thing is the idea that [laughter] artifacts are sort of a
piece of the true cross. In a sense, they're the real thing, and for
exhibition purposes and interpretation, there's no substitute. As you
begin to make decisions about categorically throwing some things
out and categorically protecting others, or conserving others, then
there's the issue of, well, in the future these things may have value
as a piece of the true cross that we don't really recognize now, in the
same way that we don't recognize some information of value now.
So there are different kinds of values that are there.

So it sounds like this is a real interesting time to be involved in
collections management.

Yes! Absolutely, and everybody's struggling with it, too.

What's the current policy of the University of Nevada, Reno's an¬
thropology museum concerning archaeological materials, which is
mostly what you're involved in?

Donald L. Hardesty

Basically, we still have a policy that we will accept collections
for a fee, which now is $750,1 believe. It used to be $600. But every¬
thing is more or less contingent on our ability to maintain the space
we have and add to it. We are devoting as much time and resources
as possible to curating existing collections. The emphasis is going
to be, I think, more and more on the management of and upgrad¬
ing of the care of the collections that we have. And even for things
like thesis projects, we may begin to encourage students to work
with existing collections, rather than going out and excavating and
collecting more collections.

As far as the interaction between the collection and management of
archaeological material and the museum itself, the museum is act-
ingas the front end for that? They're actually doing the accessioning
now, and so it's all part of the museum, but it's fairly distinct from
the other half of the museum, which is the more ethnographic.

Exactly, yes. All of our collections are accessioned into the
museum's database. When a new collection comes in, it would be
given an accession number and entered into the museum database,
but there are still lots of existing collections that have never been
accessioned, and that's one of the things that we're also going to be
working on.

Is that because they don't meet the accessioning requirements, or
they just haven't been done?

It's just never been done. The vast majority of the Nevada
Archaeology Survey collections, for example, have never been
accessioned.

I noticed that when I went and looked at the accession book. The
earliest accession date is 1980. So all the stuff that's prior to that, we
know we have it, but it doesn't seem to be showing up in the
museum's official record.

Yes. Some of the old archaeological survey collections, are be¬
ginning to be entered into the museum's accession records, but they
are given an accession number, and the accession number will re¬
flect the year, so some of them are going to have very late dates. But
still, the vast majority of those collections haven't been accessioned.

The number one priority was the care of the collections, so we
put the emphasis on getting them into proper storage conditions,

ANTHROPOLOGY MUSEUM

but the next thing is the problem of accessibility of the records re¬
lating to those collections. What's in the collection? Where is it? All
of that is another high priority.

We are talking about what the museum is going to be doing, as an
overarching body, with these collections in the future.

Yes. The other thing we talked about is the databases that we're
trying to manage in the case of the museum, as opposed to those
that are being developed in the two archaeology labs. The museum
database is essentially a management database. The concern is, first
of all, being able to say what is in a collection and where it is, and
then give information about when it was first acquired by the mu¬
seum. The archaeology labs have databases that are research oriented,
and so they're very different kinds of things. We talked about possi¬
bly changing the computer database in the museum to something
like PastPerfect that is being used a lot across the country now. We
still have an ancient database in the museum for management pur¬
poses. It's one that Ken Fliess developed years ago, and I think it was
one of those dBASE programs.

Dr. Ken Fliess is currently a professor here at the university.

Right. One of the things that we had talked about at one point
was trying to develop databases that could be used within the mu¬
seum and in the archaeology labs simultaneously, but they have
two very different purposes. The archaeology labs now use Access a
lot, which is fine, and we talked about FileMaker Pro as another
one. These databases are useful for research purposes, in particular,
where you can have very detailed categories for sorting artifacts.
The museum database, as an overarching sort of management de¬
vice, has to be quite different, so that is something that we're going
to try to upgrade in the future.

What do you see is the purpose of the anthropology museum? What
has it been, and what do you think it should be in the future?

There are probably a couple of things. One is what we've just
been talking about, the museum as an overarching management
tool for collections that are tied to research programs in the depart¬
ment—the archaeology collections, the ethnographic collections.

Donald L. Hardesty

Another purpose is educational, and we have students who par¬
ticipate in the museum studies program, museology, that will, on
occasion, work in there to learn museum methods. Graduate stu¬
dents do the same thing. This includes designing exhibits, for
example, as a way of learning how one designs exhibits. I think,
certainly, that is one of the primary purposes of that museum.

The other is public outreach, because the museum is open dur¬
ing the week at set times, and it has exhibits that the public can
view. It also serves, in some cases, as a source of information to the
public about various collections or categories of things, such as the
baskets.

How public is that? One of the things I ran into, as I started the
preliminary investigation for this project, I would say to people,
"I'm going to be doing this oral history on the anthropology mu¬
seum at UNR."

And everybody I talked to said, "They have a museum?"

[laughter] No, that's exactly the issue. In fact, when we do our
museum studies class, and I tell people that this is one of the projects
that you can do, the reaction always is, "I didn't know there was an
anthropology museum here."

Interestingly enough, it is more of a local public. People here in
town actually do learn about the museum by going to other muse¬
ums sometimes. While we don't advertise as much as we might,
there still is information that gets out, and I think that's probably
one of the things that we might want to work on more. But the
main public probably is the research public. I don't mean profes¬
sional archaeologists or anthropologists, but avocational people who
are interested in some aspect of the past, or they're interested in
something about Native American baskets or something of this sort.
They find out about the museum, and they come in and look at the
exhibits. Sometimes they can have access to the collections, as well.

So most of the folks that have been involved in the museum and are
still involved in the anthropology department at UNR — they're get¬
ting on in years. I know Kay Fowler is talking about retiring in the
not too distant future; Don Fowler, who has a role this and has been
mentioned in this interview, is half-retired now. What do you think
is going to happen with the museum when the institutional shift
happens, when we get new people in the department? What do you
think should happen to it?

ANTHROPOLOGY MUSEUM

One of the high priorities in future hires is going to be a person
who can handle a museum and can participate in the museum stud¬
ies program, as well. That's specifically linked to Kay's retirement.
Whether we're able to work that out with the university is another
issue. But as a department, that's one of our recognized needs, that
when Kay retires, we will be able to replace her with a person who
has some museum background and who would be able to take over
this museum, in effect. In my case and in Don's case, we don't tie a
museum aspect to the replacement, but that would be something
that the department would be looking for—somebody who could
work with the museum and could move into basically the same
position that we're in now.

Some people have mentioned—and I've never seen anything about
this that was official—that there's been a movement in the past to
have a university-wide museum. And that was possibly something
that this museum might morph into or had been intended to morph
into.

It's still something that we talk about as a museum studies com¬
mittee, especially, not just within the department.

I didn't realize there was a museum studies committee.

Oh, yes. There has been for a long time. There's a museology
minor, basically a museum studies minor here, and we teach an
introductory course, and in the department we teach one advanced
course. There is a group of people, including Howard Rosenberg in
the Art Department, Tom King from oral history, Alan Gubanich
from biology, and Ginny Vogel from theater—she's a historic cos¬
tumes person.

And these people are all managing, in one way or another, muse¬
ums within those departments?

No. They are involved in teaching some of the courses for
museology. The art department has a gallery area that is a quasi¬
museum. The biology department doesn't have a museum, as such,
but they've got exhibit cases in the hall, and they also have collec¬
tions of fish and other reptiles that nobody over there now is really
interested in, because the guys who did it have retired years ago.
But those collections are still there. There has for years been this

Donald L. Hardesty

talk about trying to get a university-wide museum. That idea is still
there; it's just never happened because it's not a high priority on the
university's capital improvements list. I mean, it ranks below a new
library.

Parking garage, [laughter]

Right, exactly. At one point, there was even talk of trying to get
the university foundation involved in a fundraising effort, because
the idea probably was that if it's going to happen, it's going to have
to be from private sources. The university foundation is in such a
state of disaster at the moment that that's not going to happen for a
while.

So there is that idea. And if the university museum does materi¬
alize, certainly this museum would move into it. That's the way
we'd go.

OK. That's basically the questions that I have, and I appreciate you
coming and spending so much of your time.

My pleasure.

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